Toll Road Cautionary Tale: Florida's Suncoast Parkway

Craig Pittman tells the story of the Suncoast Parkway in Citrus County, Florida. Before the Parkway opened, explains Pittman, "a consultant predicted that it would be so full of cars its toll booths would rake in $150 million a year by 2014."

The rub: "That forecast wasn't close. Nor were the next two. The consultant eventually settled on a forecast of $38 million a year." Pittman even has to add the kicker: "when 2014 rolled around, the road was so empty it collected a mere $22 million."

There is another twist, however, in the story of the Suncoast Parkway. Pittman reports: "the Florida Department of Transportation now wants to spend $256.7 million to extend the Suncoast another 13 miles north through Citrus County. And the projections the DOT is relying on to justify what has been dubbed Suncoast 2 are from the same consultant that got the first phase so wrong."

The article provides more background on the San Francisco-base consultant URS Greiner Woodward, which is responsible for "overly sunny financial projections for the Veterans Expressway in Tampa; the Seminole Parkway near Sanford; the Polk Parkway near Lakeland; and the Garcon Point Bridge near Pensacola." (Pittman adds that two years URS was taken over by Aecom, which now has a "$5.9 million annual contract for making toll road projections.")

The article includes a lot more details about the plan for Suncoast 2, as its called, as well, including the argument of both opponents and supporters of the proposal.